5 Facts About Sea Floor Spreading
Many ocean floor features are a result of the interactions that occur at the edges of these plates.
5 facts about sea floor spreading. 5 facts about seafloor spreading. Oceanic crust is young because it is continually destroyed in some places and created in others. Although the ocean covers over 70 percent of the earth s surface we have only explored a miserly 5 percent of it sc 3. The mid ocean ridge is where the seafloor spreading occurs in which tectonic plates large slabs of earth s lithosphere split apart from each other.
You can find the source through the icon at the end of each fact occurs at mid ocean ridges where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge. Whats people lookup in this blog. In the deepest ocean light doesn t reach the seafloor and therefore photosynthesis is impossible. On the basis of tharp s efforts and other new discoveries about the deep ocean floor hess postulated that molten material from earth s mantle continuously wells up along the crests of the mid ocean ridges that wind for nearly 80 000 km 50 000 miles through all the world s oceans.
The east pacific rise is a mid ocean ridge that runs through the eastern pacific ocean and separates the pacific plate from the north american plate the cocos plate the nazca plate and the antarctic plate. At ridges in the middle of oceans new oceanic crust is created. The mid atlantic ridge for instance separates the north american plate from the eurasian plate and the south american plate from the african plate. The seafloor spreading hypothesis was proposed by the american geophysicist harry h.
Sea floor spreading earth s surface is composed of two kinds of crust continental and oceanic. These are the best facts for seafloor spreading collected by our users from the web. Theory and evidence of seafloor spreading earth eclipse ppt who is harry hess powerpoint presentation free what is sea floor spreading quora sea floor spreading and polar reversal lesson transcript. Seafloor spreading occurs along mid ocean ridges large mountain ranges rising from the ocean floor.
Seafloor spreading is a geologic process where there is a gradual addition of new oceanic crust in the ocean floor through a volcanic activity while moving the older rocks away from the mid oceanic ridge. 5 interesting facts about seafloor spreading. Definition theory facts 3 42 go to plate tectonics. Convection currents in the molten mantle cause the plates to slowly move about the earth a few centimeters each year.
Most continental crust is over 3 billion years old while virtually all oceanic crust is less than 180 million years old. Sea floor spreading and polar reversal 5 17 sea floor spreading. The seafloor moves and carries continents with it.